Allegations of voter fraud are spurious

Voter fraud allegations by people such as Kris Kobach never are based on any research findings of concerted efforts in recent decades to stimulate and influence fraudulent voting, such as by politicians or activist groups. Nor are they based on a critique of controls in place in polling stations to contain illegal voting.

Instead the allegations are based on database analyze of razor-thin aberrations in voting patterns or voter registration rolls. Kobach mentioned one the other day.

The Washington Post reports, Kobach pointed to a study from the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit founded by Stephen K. Bannon and another Breitbart editor, that purported to find 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election.

The study is America The Vulnerable: The Problem of Duplicate Voting, by the Government Accountability Institute available on the White House website. The GAI collected voter data from 21 states for the 2016 general election. The GAI found 7,271 highly likely cases of inter-state duplicate voting. It identified another 1,200 cases of likely intra-state duplicate voting. The total of 8,471.

126 million persons voted in 2016. The 21-state sample accounted for 75 million voters. Adjusting the 8,471 figures of estimated duplicate voters for the entire country brings this to 14,231 estimated duplicative votes in the 2016 general election.

For every million voters, that amounts to 113 duplicate votes. For a 100,000 population city, where perhaps 40,000 people voted, that amounts to 5 duplicate votes.

Voter fraud can happen in ways other than voting in more than one jurisdiction. The GAI report does not estimate the amount of other voter fraud. More importantly, neither Kobach of the GAI has come forward with any evidence of a conspiracy to stimulate fraudulent voting.